Stop Waiting For Superman

I just finished watching Waiting for Superman, an emotionally evocative documentary about students in American schools.  A large part of the film focuses on the dilemma of educational reform in an environment of ironclad tenures that are vigilantly defended by teachers’ unions.  The documentary briefly mentions that these teachers unions arose decades ago because of mistreatment of educators (as is the history of most unions).  Now, those unions have become very politically powerful and they work to protect teachers, even if that protection comes at the cost of student success.

But wait! What is meant by “protect teachers?” Are teachers who just sit in class waiting for the day to go by because they can’t stand their jobs actually “protected?” I had one of those teachers who said we didn’t even need to talk to him because our assignments were written on the chalkboard.  He would spend the class time reading his newspaper with the soles of his shoes staring at us.  Maybe he had his eyes down there because he was definitely sitting on his head. 

Are hating kids and feeling miserable about the classrooms and hallways teachers inhabit 5 days a week something to be preserved and protected?  No, the real meaning is that their salaries are protected.  Or more to the point, their access to a means of living protected.  No wonder.  In an economy where every person must sell themselves on the labor market as their ONLY means of earning a living (unfortunately, there’s no alternative economy in which people are provided free access to life’s resources in our wonderful FREE market), it only makes sense for them to defend their tenures/salaries/means of living.  So, teachers, who have a decent degree of social respect for their professions, and sufficient incomes to fight for their means of life, are able to “protect” their livelihoods.  Students, and particularly students of non-wealthy parents, are not able to access a meaningful education.  They suffer the consequences of this broken system throughout their lives.

The film tries to end on a high-note with a review of the KIPP school program, which has had undeniable success in producing students with better test scores.  I’m not sure how the schools function in terms of student well being, but let me leave that aside for the moment.  These KIPP schools are scarce, and because they receive public funding, they must use a lottery system to determine who gets admitted.  The film follows five kids and it shows them anxiously waiting to hear if their number gets called.  You can also see the other parents and children in the background nail-bitingly attending each utterance from the announcers hoping the next name or number called is theirs.  As the number of names called grows and the available seats reduce, the sense of desperation on their young faces makes you want to rush in and rescue them all.  You hold on to hope to the last number, because that’s how all movies resolve the climax—at the last minute, and in the favor of the protagonist.  Not in this case.  It’s real life and most of the featured kids don’t get called.  The shattering of hope for the kids makes it difficult to hold back the tears.  Then, the realization on the parents’ faces that not only have their children missed an important opportunity to improve their lives been lost, but that they, the parents, have let their kids down.  Mommy can’t make it better.  She can’t throw money at the problem and make it disappear.  Their daily fight with the cruel market world, against which they try to insulate their kids, is a losing battle.  The system is king, and they are the pawns.  Somehow, they must summon all remaining strength not to let their sense of defeat, worry, and despair spill over onto their kids.  They have to console their children because it is their pain that takes priority at that time.  Despite every Herculean effort to shield their kids from the continuous battle to provide a better life, their kids know.  The kids know that their parents can’t protect them from the harsh world.  They know that the impact of this lottery is not just about where to go to school, but a lottery about how their lives will turn out, and it’s looking less and less favorable. 

These are the unsparing sacrifices we make to perpetuate our outdated, insufficient, and barely-above-savage social system.  All those people who work so hard to critique a resource-based economic model to find any unpleasantry, any objection, any difficult challenge that would be faced in an RBE amaze me in that they seem to overlook all the heartache of our current system.  It’s like they measure an RBE against a fictional utopian standard, in which everyone gets everything they want and problems are extinct.  They use that to argue against an RBE, without noticing that their measurement should be against our current system.  Proponents of an RBE do not expect utopia, just a life and planet a lot better off than what we have now.   With all the road kill caused by our current system, it feels like there must be a thousand better options, which is all we need—better!  And it sure is time for better, unless we want to continue to watch lives hinge on the outcome of lotteries.  

Regarding The Educational Imperative

It is commonly understood in the Zeitgeist community that education is the means by which we can move into a transitional economy, which will evolve into a transformed society that respects and advances each person’s well being. By educating people, we intend to promote the value shift that becomes necessary to survive on this planet—the shift we have all experienced through recognition of certain vital facts that dismiss outdated understandings of human nature and faith in the monetary-market regulating paradigm.  After being disabused of these cultural myths, and comprehending a unifying perspective that twines the seemingly disparate strings of planetary suffering into the rope and noose of a core social danger, we are compelled to share with each other.  Such is the sensible response.  Like the sentinel meerkat warning its playful clan that danger threatens them all, we cry out in hopes that we will be heard and our clan will act.

Our clan is stubborn, though.  Many will not listen, and some will react violently.  The pugnacious status-quo defenders already notice that something is “wrong with the world,” but their ideological helmets constrain the expansion of their perspectives.  They’ve already committed themselves to this battle, so deeply entrenched in a worldview where war is the only means to resolve the problems.  To peer above the trench is not an opportunity to see if the war is worth fighting; it’s just a risky move that will end with a bullet to the head.  To be exposed to the body of evidence gathered under the Zeitgeist library beckons the inner skeptic, anthropologist, and psychologist to lay bare a history of woe and a “self” identified with that woe.  Make no mistake! Even those who have been most advantaged by this system have at least some awareness that their profit has come at the cost of their conscience.  Wounded are we.

Those that do not listen because they “have better things to do” are generally too busy “keeping their heads above water,” not realizing the forces that conspire to drown them.  Or they have an artificial divide between their lives and the rest of the world.  This lack of awareness may be natural in the sense that we are not born with a mature understanding of the complex relationships that exist in, around, and between us.  It does not mean that no effort should be made to displace that ignorance.  Humans are not born literate, but we make considerable effort in educating people to become so because it provides them with unceasing access to useful and entertaining information.  Similarly, every effort should be made to foster people’s understanding of the ecological framework in which they live their lives, and the ways in which nature circumscribes our behavior. When we have a better grasp of what limits nature sets, we actually gain more freedom from what our minds conceive as “the limit.” Nature is a much bigger thinker than we are, which is why scientists discover unimagined life forms, cosmological marvels, and invisible realities.  Charles Darwin recognized this when he stated, “We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it” (Descent of Man).

The goal of the Zeitgeist Movement to educate is necessary and logical.  We cannot create a new, sustainable, and emergent society without a comprehensive education to allow the maturation of ecological perspective (I use the term ecological in the broadest sense possible, inclusive of the interconnections among earth, society, and psyche).  The predominant conception of “education” needs to be examined.  When people discuss education, there is a somewhat narrow view that it means sharing written or verbal intellectual information that will stir one to question their own ideas and revise when reasonable.  We intuitively know that this isn’t always effective, but we persist anyway.  The Zeitgeist Media Festival and Media Project are addendums to the educational campaign that seek to connect emotionally with people.  

Ultimately, the movement is concerned with accelerating a value shift, and my purpose in writing this article is to encourage members to embrace an omni-directional approach to “education.”  Some people will be moved by the plentiful intellectual output, and some by the artistic output, but for this movement to reach critical mass, it will need to reach a very diverse population of different motivations.  A common conclusion is that either people wise up or they will have to deal with painful bio-psycho-social disasters.  Various forms of protest, so-called “sustainable community” projects, and cooperative farming are seen as outside the scope of the Zeitgeist Movement.  Alternative currencies like time banking or community-based “dollars” are properly criticized as corruptible and inadequate for accomplishing the lasting change we need. 

I understand and appreciate these criticisms and they serve to remind us—repeatedly—that we should not lose sight of the bigger picture.  However, such community-based initiatives can be seen as a learning tool to show members of our communities that we can and should work together.  Strengthening social bonds and social responsibility will give us pause before rewarding behavior that is loyal to the prevailing “golden” rule: profit over people.  Rampant misguided individualism, ideologically driven by “freedom from society” and “my property” are colossal barriers to the value shift that is necessary for a new society to take root.  Scientific evidence will compel a definite segment of the population to overhaul its value system, but as we can see with religions, reasoning alone will not suffice.  Direct experience in real situations that challenge people’s beliefs regarding human nature and social systems requires them to reach beyond their conditioned reflexes and ideas.  Protests, community projects, and alternative currencies may provide those challenges at different levels of meaning for a greater variety of people.  There are, no doubt, many other forms of situational challenges, but it is important to ask if a particular situation can serve as a transformative educational tool.  So, let’s not get stuck in confined paths of “education” and be open to a broad, multi-layered approach. Besides that, people will want to be activists in various ways, and that is the promise of a resource-based economy: people contributing in ways that fulfill them with an understanding that social interest and personal interest need not be in conflict with one another.  When we help each other, we help ourselves.

Bad Decisions

A few years ago, a nameless couple signed a contract with pages of purgatorial fine print that committed them to decades of debt so they could own a home.  The economy crashed, their house value plummeted, one half of the couple was laid off, and making ends meet became impossible.  Those who were not so unfortunate blame these victims and sum it up to “they signed the contract, so they made a bad decision.” 

Let’s roll back the clock a bit and look at the perspective of pre-crash days:

Just a couple of years ago, those of us attempting to warn friends against taking out questionable mortgages were ridiculed as conspiracy theorists.  Didn’t we understand that real estate always goes up?  Or that home ownership was the only way to guarantee one’s retirement?  That the longer you wait to buy a house, the further out of reach that house was going to get? The question of whether to become a home owner gave way to the much more presumptive “How are we going to get you in?” While government promised to encourage home ownership as a way of improving participation by poor people in the economy, banks came up with increasingly clever mortgage products that postponed the real cost of buying a house well into the future…

“What if interest rates are higher in five years?” I asked.“The increase in the home’s value will offset it,” the mortgage broker responded.“What if the house—for some reason—doesn’t go up in value? I asked.“Houses always go up in value,” she responded.“But what if the mortgage resets to a rate I can’t pay?”“Everybody has these mortgages, now.  Banks can’t set the rate so high that everyone defaults.  They won’t make anything that way.”...

Because these borrowers were generally less educated and less experienced with complex banking products, they were also less likely to fully grasp the implications of adjustable rates—often buried deep in mortgage documents only presented at closing, when there’s no time to read through them.  Other high-risk mortgage candidates included homeowners who could be induced to “move up” to bigger properties, and “flippers”—who bought houses with almost no money down hoping to resell them at a profit before the first payments came due. 

---  Life Inc., Douglas Rushkoff

People have limited powers to predict the future, even the experts among us.  Potential homeowners were thinking that houses were a solid investment, the economy was stable, and that they were getting fair and accurate information from their mortgage brokers and realtors.  Is it stupid to trust someone to give you true information?  Yes, in this economic paradigm!  Everyone is forced to make a buck off of your ignorance or lack of skill.  The more ignorant and the less skillful, even more profit can be made.  But, we can’t really function in a society where we have a paranoid distrust of all workers we transact with.  Imagine that at every single transaction you run through the scenarios of suspicion:  Do these noodles I’m about to eat have a tummy-upsetting ingredient that will drive me over to the adjacent pharmacy that is well stocked with gastro-drugs?  Is the noodle owner getting kickbacks from the pharmacy owner and from the gastro-drug manufacturer?  Will my iPhone combust so I have to buy a new one and pay for the burn on my hand? (http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/red-hot-smoking-iphone-selfcombusts-on-airliner-20111129-1o3zn.html) Does this shirt have non-toxic fibers so I won’t get a rash?  When my dentist tells me I have five cavities that need fillings, is she just trying to make a sale?  (This actually happened to me and I was thankful I had a convenient opportunity to get a free second opinion that indicated my teeth had no cavities, which is what I expected since I’ve had pretty good dental hygiene.)

It’s so easy to make a bad decision, even when you have good information like picking the tastiest sandwich on the menu.  It’s a lot easier to make a bad decision when factors around you conspire to get you to make that bad decision.  There’s a lot of money to be made in bad decisions. 

There is the other issue of how a bad decision is arrived at.  When I lived in Thailand, I was aghast upon hearing impoverished people spend two to three months of their total salary (via debt) to buy a new mobile phone.  Why would they make such an irrational purchase?  I used to sum it up with, “Idiots!”  Calling them idiots helped relieve my discomfort over figuring out why such a bad decision was made.

Someone declaring that a “bad decision was made” is a sign of a lazy thinker.  It’s a bit like a child shoving the mess under their bed and declaring victory over the Untidy Monster.  No more thinking required.  No more following the chain of causality about the reasoning behind those bad decisions.  And the sad part is not so much the laziness, but the outcome: a deep lack of compassion.  Those bad decision makers should suffer for their sins bad decisions.  The Westboro Baptist Church says that dead soldiers are the natural result of bad social decisions like giving gays closer-to-equal access to citizens’ rights.  Kids get addicted to drugs or involved in mischief because they are “black sheep.”  Problem solved, case closed.  The irony is that labeling an action a bad decision is itself the bad decision because it does nothing to resolve the problem, and in fact, it enables the harmful behavior to continue.  It is a reaction to one’s frustration with oneself from a lack of skill and/or intelligence to truly resolve the underlying problem(s).  

SIDE NOTE: There should be a research study in which Libertarians people who liberally attribute someone's suffering to bad decisions should get offered a license to a great new software program that has in its terms agreement a statement about the right of the patent holder to procure all hardware the products of said software are housed on, including those to whom those products are distributed to (I plagiarized this idea from Monsanto).  The terms should be quite lengthy, coded in legalese, and the software should be something that is a "must have."  I would be interested to see how many people "agree" to those terms.

The roots are deep in decisions we make, and it is difficult to tease out all of the factors.  In looking more deeply at why some Thai people overextended themselves to buy a mobile phone, a few possibilities surface.  Thais have strongly interconnected social networks that advantage them (increase their access to goods/services that promote their survival and well being).  Such strong social networks come with costs that relate to maintaining their membership in a peer group.  If they fall too far behind, they may find themselves without access to that peer group and its resources.  If having a mobile phone is part of that cost, then it may be entirely rational to make that purchase.  Or what about the fact that low-income workers rarely have the opportunity to afford the things the free market is supposed to “provide:” creature comforts?  These workers live austerely day in and out (while seeing extravagance in every billboard, poster, and on TV).  They earn just enough to survive.  If having a small piece of the technological pie makes them feel a little less like life is so dreary, then the purchase is a rational decision.  This is the common advice of dieting so that the diet is sustainable.  Have your cake and eat it, just not every day!  Those who ruthlessly deprive themselves finally relent to their cravings and they abandon their diet.

Of late, there is a lot of new research into epigenetics explaining how nurture affects nature.  Nature (DNA) and nurture act together in a constant dynamic interplay that lead to physiological, physical, cognitive, and emotional output.  One day, you are full of energy and very “productive.”  The next, you can’t seem to focus and chide yourself for not being “productive.”  There doesn’t seem to be a reliable pattern to these swings in energy and mental focus.  Even if you think you have learned how your body systems work, there could be an unpredicted environmental upset that challenges this “reliability.”

In this study, the environment at young ages affected gene expression much later in life. http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-10/living-conditions-child-may-imprint-themselves-your-dna-life  Does the child born to a stressed-out parent who then has their “delayed gratification” genes turned off and battles this problem throughout life deserve to be convicted as a bad decision maker?  This is oversimplified extrapolation, but the basic issue remains the same.  Most humans born today are just “bad decisions” made by impoverished and/or uneducated people.  Those kids are punished for simply being the product of that bad decision and now they must pay the price, which is a debt that lasts a lifetime.

Our Hollow-hearted Neighborhood

A 65 year old man lives near me.  Physically fit and socially active, he is able to live independently.  He has lived in his home for 26 years and has earned his living through a specialized trade.  Business has been steady for him for most of his time as a craftsman, until a few years back.  Since that time, he has struggled to make ends meet.  He has been, as far as I can tell, mostly generous with his neighbors and his church community.  What he lacks in intellectual volume, he makes up for in heart dimensions.  (I have only known him for a couple of years, so I cannot determine if his intellectual capacity has been diminished over time by aging, lack of mental exercise, or exposure to toxic chemicals in his trade.)  As he struggled to pay his bills over the last several years, he began to fall behind in payments.  His church community did not help him.  God didn’t give him a stipend either (jest).  Desperation coupled with a lack of awareness about modern tactics to exploit people like him, he fell for one of those infamous “you won the lottery, but must pay us to claim your prize” scams.  I tried to warn him after he had already invested money from himself and his family who found the scam credible.  Ultimately, it was revealed that it was indeed a scam, and he was not able to recover the money.  His relationship with his family was severed by them (in their anger over their losses), and so he was left to his own devices.

His house went into auction, he was scraping up any jobs he could get, and finally his truck broke.  The damage was around $6000 to repair.  He had no money left, had a terrible credit score, and was not able to get himself out from under his mounting debt.  An eviction notice appeared one day, and he tried to work with a lawyer to stay in his home.  A few weeks later, the sheriff came to tell him he needed to vacate the house.  The sheriff also explained that many scam artists are targeting victims to pay them for legal work to save their homes, when in fact they are just exploiting the homeowners’ ignorance and distress. 

I wish I could help him, but I have a house full of roommates and there is no space to accommodate another person.  I am also looking for work/income, so helping him financially is not an option either.  Instead, I just watch the savagery of our economic system twist itself ever tighter around his neck with his gasps for help going unanswered.  I realize my activism efforts won’t help him or anyone in the immediate future, but I hope that they will help future generations. 

Proponents of our current system would like to argue that it is his fault for not being smart enough, for not saving enough, for not being skilled enough to pick up other work, and for being too generous when he should not have been.  Our economic regime is a game that everyone must play because there is “no alternative” to the “free” market.  Just like in sports, some people play well and excel, while others are less adept (at that particular game) so they either get shunted to the side or develop their skills somewhere else.  Non-athletes may not be admitted to the top tier of sports teams, but they do not have their means of life cut off.  In our economic regime, your access to life resources depends on how well you play the game.  Losing is synonymous with death.  It is the ultimate penalty. 

When you can use the lens of an anthropologist, the game is revealed for what it is: brutal, competitive, uncompassionate, and entirely unmoored from the “life ground”.  The savagery of cultures from the past seems not so ancient when properly juxtaposed to our current economic system. 

What if I proposed that all access to means of life was determined by one’s ability to throw a discus?  The further you could throw it, the more resources you got.  Those who had less genetic power to grow their muscles would be starved, which would then make them even less likely to grow muscles.  Their spiral of downgraded access would leave a trail of misery until their deaths.  Such an economic system seems so ridiculous to us now, but after generations, it would seem inherent to our culture.  Justifications would arise for why the system must be preserved and how it is “fair.” Revolution would be too radical and upsetting; besides, everyone had a fair chance to develop their discus throwing skills. The anthropologist would see the system for what it was: an arbitrary system of rules that leads to great abundance for some, but leaves many destitute.  The anthropologist would have no existing prejudice about the “deserved” nature of those with muscles and discus throwing abilities.  It would appear to be exceedingly contrived and divorced from its purpose to provide people with access to life-advancing resources.

So, while humans struggle to find their bearings in understanding our global dehumanizing economic paradigm of money-for-more-money, my neighbor gets tossed out of his home into the hollow-hearted social body.  I do not know what will happen to him and try to not speculate much.  And while my neighbor’s situation forms part of my local perspective, there is the reminder that his proliferation of despair is more benign than those who struggle to get enough calories and clean water every day. 

There should be enough examples to provide the coup de grace to this barbaric social system, which dictates the prescriptions and proscriptions for resource allocation.  Without the correct diagnosis, uneducated prescriptions will merely modify the system’s disease pattern instead of resolving it.  Awaken your inner anthropologist as the first step.

My Week at Occupy OC

I have spent the past week at Occupy Wall St in Orange County in Irvine.  Occupy is not a Zeitgeist Movement event, but it is a meeting place of people who are feeling and acknowledging the failings of our current system.  People of many different backgrounds are passionate about alerting the public to the dangers of our economic system and they desperately want it changed. 

There is a good deal of time spent on the operational needs of this "village," as it is called.  I am inspired by the way people are relating inter-personally and organizationally.  People are working cooperatively, not competitively, and that has created a real sense of community.  There is a large food tent, where donations from the public are stored, and people can eat and drink what they need.  The village is growing organically, not by some pre-determined blueprint.  It is open to ideas from other occupations, but has found on some occasions that the logistical characteristics of other locations do not help the flow in Irvine, so they are modified to fit the needs of Irvine's village, for now.  Its structure is emergent.

There is deep-seated commitment to leaderlessness, and self-expression, even while recognizing the risks involved of intentional misrepresentation.  For example, a general theme of Occupy protesters is that endorsing a particular political candidate is not the solution, but there are a couple of people who have shown up with Ron Paul posters.  Thankfully, they have not remained very long.  I would say the majority of protesters understand that politicians are bought by the highest bidder, and they cannot be relied upon to protect people's access to life goods. 

Personally, my experience has been intense, productive, and exhausting.  I've engaged with a lot of people from completely different cultures, ages, educational backgrounds, and personal perspectives.  I let them know that while I share the perspective that our current system is failing and has led to a towering income disparity between the 99% and 1%, I understand this problem to be systemic.  I made a short speech to the group on the first day of occupation to let them know that even if we got rid of the top 1%, the next group would rise to take their place.  I have a sign that reads, "The answer is NOT jobs" next to a picture (circulated on the net) of an Asian girl working at a sewing machine with a Nike logo.  I have another sign with an image taken from the Zeitgeist Media page that shows two men holding bats while shaking hands with the question, "How can we trust each other if this is business?"  A journalist working with the OC Register took a picture of me with that sign and it's on their website: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/occupy-323151-irvine-city.html?pic=2   (picture 16)  My message to him while he was "interviewing" me got a little garbled, but I realize that it didn't fit within the standard soundbyte meme of contemporary journalism.

Perhaps one of the most interesting discussions I had was with a man who grew up in China, but has lived in the US for several years now.  He was telling me that during "Communism," children were encouraged to follow their interests in careers which they enjoyed.  He said the difference in earnings between doctors and janitors was quite small, so money could not be an incentive for any single career path.  In discussing other elements of society, we arrived at a cultural norm, which instructed people to subjugate their interests for that of the collective.  This is a common theme in collectivistic societies.  In America, the norm is the reverse (individualism).  All social interests are expected to be secondary to self-interest.  As I see it, both are out of balance.  The decision to elevate one's interests above the collective or vice versa are matters that cannot be resolved in abstraction.  We do this somewhat naturally in other settings.  For example, if I'm out with a group of friends and they all want to go to a cafe, I will go even though I don't drink coffee.  I won't go everyday, but sometimes, I will go for their sake.  To understand this point, which seems rather simple, but has far-reaching effects, takes education.  I don't mean education in the traditional sense of learning a discrete subject such a math, but of education in the sense of how to relate to others and what the dynamics of group interaction are.  I think religions see themselves as having roles in this sphere of education, but they get so clouded by speculations and rituals that the real work remains undone. 

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's fair to say that humans often have narrow perspectives.  There is so much information out there that a single human brain has to filter out a lot simply to function.  People who honestly investigate one topic in depth usually fall into the field of science, and their findings surprise us because they do not frequently confirm common assumptions.  Once this pattern of exploded assumptions is repeated, people begin to realize that their knowledge is always tentative.  With that in place, there is more space to look at oneself and one's reactions to new ideas.  It also can lead to greater compassion, along the lines of, "If I've been wrong so many times, maybe other people are also victims of misunderstanding, and their actions reflect that misunderstanding."  The solution then is about education:  emotional, physical, intellectual, and social.

The Ebb of Commercialization

Yesterday evening during a glorious sunset (at a Zeitgeist meeting in Laguna Beach) I saw around 20 skimboarders enjoying the generous waves and physics of hydroplaning.  It was quite a show.  Their facility with landing on the skim boards after gaining momentum from a quick sprint, and sharp u-turns to surf the waves back to shore made me realize that this was an art for these people.  They had likely spent much time in developing their skills.  They cheered each other on and took turns in challenging the ocean.  There was a real feeling of community among them.

They did not appear to have any official organization or laws to define their behavior: no signs, no contracts, no "terms of use."  Their conduct was orderly and this order arose simply because of their mutual interest in the sport and respect for each other.  Organization flowed naturally; it was self-evident.  Taking turns in this way may be difficult for a two-year old, but for adolescents and adults, it was obvious.  No one paid them to participate.   See? There is hope for humans!  We don't need laws to regulate every aspect of our behavior.  If we can move beyond (via proper brain development) a terrible-twos mentality, then we can more effectively cooperate, and the situation/circumstances will dictate the means of that cooperation.  One-size-fits-all laws developed in abstraction will be largely unnecessary.

Another point I want to make about this activity relates to understanding its social and individual significance.  Commerce-oriented minds will narrowly assume that this sport has no productive output.  What they really mean is that this activity does not produce a commodity, stock option, or some other money sequence value.  If we look at "productive output" defined more broadly as "useful" we can recognize value in this activity.

1. The sense of community not only fosters social responsibility, but individual well-being since humans are naturally social creatures and need social stimulation to maintain their cognitive brain systems and emotional health.
2. Skimboarding is demanding physically, and as such it provides these people's bodies a wonderful exercise opportunity.
3. Since this activity takes place in a natural setting, it allows people to connect with nature that reminds them of the beauty and bounty that only Earth provides us.  Ecological awareness and responsibility become part of the skimboarders consciousness.
4. Expressing themselves in this way helps to reduce stress and feel personal freedom to enjoy life.

A person deprived of these opportunities because of money or other barriers, for example, will be more socially isolated, less respectful, less creative, more careless about the environment, unhappy at work (and a misanthrope with coworkers), less physically healthy, and if this person has children, a less in-tune parent.  Of course, all those problems are something that can be exploited to profit from, but that's a value orientation from an outdated, irresponsible, and inhumane economic system.

Occupy Sane Street

Last night’s CA teamspeak meeting included a lot of lively dialogue about the Occupy Wall St protests.  Several perspectives were voiced about how The Zeitgeist Movement should or should not be involved.  One theme was that because TZM has no real top-down structure, it simply is up to individual members to decide if they are interested in participating.  There was a note of caution that the Occupy protests could get trapped in an “us vs. them” stance that is counter to the social understandings that form the foundation of TZM.  That kind of reactionary and divisive thinking would likely lead to violence and oppression.

That said, the Occupy Wall St movement does share some convictions with TZM.  For example, in the recently released Declaration, it is recognized that profit has been gained at the price of human life and well being, Earth’s ecosystem has been abused by rapacious business practices, and that humanity must cooperate to create a better alternative to the current economic system.  Occupy Wall St is also an explicitly leaderless organization that does not condone violent behavior.  For a nascent organization, it has already attracted mainstream media attention (even though it took a few weeks!), and is acting as a kind of magnet around which different organizations whose work is to promote life values (as opposed to money/profit values) are coalescing.  TZM’s aim of educating people to reach a critical mass before engaging in any widespread coordinated action to directly confront the prevailing paradigm needs to attract people who recognize the current undermining of life values.  According to some TZM members who have attended Occupy Wall St assemblies, the people there are largely receptive to core concepts expressed in TZM. 

Another thread in the discussion last night was that no one can know how a transition to a resource-based economy will unfold, or if it will happen.  Is the Occupy Wall St movement part of that transition to a more sane society?  Will it just make things worse?  My present feeling is that because these people are acknowledging the attack our economic system is having on life values it represents a step in the right direction.  However, I am reminded of the solemn moments immediately after the collapse of the Twin Towers in which there was a quiet reflection about how and why such tragedy could be intended and executed.  It was as if people paused their normal habits and were forced to reexamine their values and their place in the interconnected web of a global society.  That could have been the beginning of a new, more enlightened perspective.  It turned out not to be and people fell into anxiety, fear, and revenge-filled thoughts that blamed “them,” and gave rise to a stupid one-upsmanship in patriotism, in America.  In other parts of the world, the retaliatory posture of the US marshaled the production of countless expensive weapons (economic growth) that were quickly detonated in and around “terrorist cells” creating demand for more weapons (cyclical consumption).  Many Americans just thought they were “gettin’ the bad guy.”  Bad guy thinking is a sign of a limited perspective, in which the error occurs by reducing social and psychological complexity to a simple conclusion.  This thinking is helpful if someone is wielding a knife and ready to plunge it into your chest because you need to react quickly to neutralize the threat, but to take a social action based on that mentality is foolish and will, most likely, lead to a proliferation of problems.  So, I see this as a critical opportunity for TZM to spur deeper inquiry into the malfunction of society.  When people are hungry, homeless, anxiety-ridden, and frustrated, they want quick answers and quick actions.  Unfortunately, TZM does not have the collective resources to feed and house everyone, but it does have an abundance of materials and passion to educate people about the metastasized cancer that invades our social organism.  With proper diagnosis comes better treatment.  I hope we have the collective patience to arrive at thorough diagnosis.

The last main point I want to mention is that the group showed agreement in that we hope a transition to a new economy will lead to less suffering, not more, and that humanity will come together in time to prevent its self-inflicted extinction.